I walked a mile in these boots, and then...(really IMHO, I promise)

Well, somehow all my jeans got too long. Actually it wasn’t the older ones suddenly becoming and inch longer, or me getting shorter, it’s just recently that I’ve been buying one of Levis’ newer styles, and they happen to run long. The bottoms were starting to get frayed from scraping on the ground. It doesn’t help that they don’t come in odd inseam lengths–a 31 would be perfect for me, and a 30 would be too short. Some of you will say, “So have them hemmed”, but I’ve never found that to look right on jeans.

So Monday night I went out and bought a pair of boots. These are semi dressy Italian Cafe Noir boots, and they seemed to solve the scraping hems problem. The next evening, Tuesday, my wife had a business association meeting, and, as she’s usually not up to long walks to the extent that I am, I thought here was a perfect chance take the new footwear out for a shakedown walk.

So off I went, to the Cheesecake Factory (yeah, TGIF for yuppies, whatever). There I could sit at the bar and have a well deserved drink or two to wash down my dinner. This place is about a mile from home, and mostly uphill. On the way there, I experienced no problems, and the boots were as comfortable as deck shoes.

But on the way back, my left big toe started to get irritated, right at the knuckle where it joins the body of the foot. Yet in every other respect the boots seem to fit fine, and my other foot’s not being irritated.

Is that something that can be fixed, or avoided? Could a shoe repair shop do anything? If so, I’m not sure what I could ask them to do. Or is there some kind of insert I could put in there, to stop my toe from scraping on the instep?

Feel around inside the boot to see if there might possibly be a piece of the inside fabric or something else sticking up causing the irritiation.

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Is this what you are actually supposed to call that part of the foot? If not, what is?
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The problem seems to have gone away because I haven’t noticed it any more.